8/05/06 Saturday: Rainbow Lake (west) to The Birches Shelter, Baxter State Park (23.9mi)

PICTURES:
1. Scene from Rainbow Ledges, site a the tremendous crop of blueberries
2. Just a shot of some of the blueberries that we harvested...
3. Katahdin from one of the Rainbow Ledges as we begin our descent toward Abol Bridge...
4. One of the more pleasant trails encountered north of Rainbow Ledges...
5&6. View of Mt. Katahdin taken from the entrance trail to BSP (Baxter State Park)
7. Largest catapillar I've ever seen!!!
8. Brian on one of the better "groomed" trails inside BSP
9. Interesting tree and root formation over large boulder...
10. View of Katahdin from Elbow Pond
11. View of Katahdin from Tracy Pond inlet..


I really hate putting on wet socks and boots, especially in the morning... Last night I had given up rock hopping, and just walked through the puddles, thankfully the water never went over the top of my boots... Anyway, I wrung out my socks again as I had done last night and slipped them back on, put my damp clothes back on and hoped for clear skies and warm temps... When I exited the tent at 0630, I noticed the sky was blue and another beautiful day was donning... I was instantly energized and fininshed packing and once again headed north to our base camp in Baxter State Park. I stopped at the first spring I noticed along the way to replenish my water supply, and while treating it Brian walked up... He had stayed at the campground with the boyscouts the previous night and had difficulty sleeping with all the late night commotion... We were happy to meet again and began moving north again... He pulled ahead again and I spent some time fixing some water bars on the trail until we met up again on top of the Rainbow Ledges... Here, with plenty of sun, was a tremendous bluberry crop... Brian was busy picking blueberries and already had half of his 1 liter bottle full. I decided to join him and we both decided to remove our boots and socks and put them in the sun to help them dry some... We stay up there for over an hour until we had both picked 32Oz of blueberries and eaten an unknown quantity in the process...;)... At this point it was 1000 and we were 16 miles from our shelter for the night. We both made great time walking at nearly 3.0 on dryer more level terrain... We also knew the trail inside Baxter State Park (BSP) would be a nice walk. We stopped next at the Abol Bridge Campsite store to get some lunch and buy some snacks for tonight and the ascent of Katahdin tomorrow. It was 1300 and we had only 10 relatively easy miles left, so we relaxed and finished drying our boots and socks while we carb' up with all sorts of stuff only hikers would eat... Little Debbie products, cookies, ice cream, sandwitches, pizza, snickers, and a whole host of other packaged products...:)... When your burning 5-6000 calories daily you can eat just about anything I suppose... The local ridge runner dropped by for a chat and mentioned there were no other thru-hikers at the birches yet tonight and that the following days weather looked excellent... We were psyched and by 1430 we were off to finish the last 10 miles to the base camp, The Birches... The walk through BSP was nice and for the most part smooth, but did require one ford... I arrived at the Birches at about 1630, and met up again with Brian who had arrived 30 min earlier... We decided to eat in the common area near the Ranger Station, which had plenty of sun to help dry some of the rest of gear, and warm us too... Our camp site was nestled in a white birch grove with little sun penetrating through... We finished our lunch and moved to the camping area where we were joined later by one more thru-hiker before we all retired for the night...